it’s another one of those nights that won’t shut off
drone of the city loud enough to make the buildings vibrate
a beat & a pause

a beat & a pause
& you thrumming into my lack of sleep
aggravating my creeping insanity
torment being you
hovering outside my arm’s reach
beyond the balcony edge

the unexpected rain encourages a ghost of you
gliding up behind me
your cool hands up under my shirt
pressing the small of my back
a whisper of clothing
the briefest scent
then it’s lost
in sudden freshets
falling with the run-off from forty vacant balconies
until the railing lifts away
& I can’t tell
if you’re pushing me forward
or holding me back

beyond the balcony edge
shafts of light from sleepless apartments
& the vertical rain I can barely breathe through
there will still be another gazebo somewhere
spinning in the sunlight
another arsonist burning down a bandshell
a swarm of mothers weeping
over their babies drowning in the bay
beneath layers of woodsmoke & gasoline
amid the din of orchestral brass & automobile horns
beneath another layer of gulls circling
beneath a spiral sky
& if I could send you back into interminable night
kill the thrum of the city shaking
snap off the synapses of my aggravated brain
with a sleep so silent dreamless & long
not even your ghost would survive it

Originally published in White Wall Review 23 (1999)